Kaltinenai (Kaltinan in Yiddish) is located in the northwestern part of
Lithuania, in the Zamut (Zemaitija) region, along the main Kaunas-Klaipeda road,
about 50 km. to the northeast of the Tavrig (Taurage) district administrative center.
The Kaltinan estate was first mentioned in the chronicles of the Prussian crusader order
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century a small town already
existed beside the estate. In 1702 the town was granted permission to hold an annual fair.

Before 1795 Kaltinan was included in the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom. According
to the third division of Poland in that year by the three superpowers of those
times, Russia, Prussia and Austria, Lithuania was divided between Russia and
Prussia. As with most of Lithuania, Kaltinan became a part of the Russian
Empire, first in the Vilna province (Gubernia) and from 1843 in the Kovno
Gubernia. During the period of Independent Lithuania (1918-1940) Kaltinan
was a county administrative center in the Tavrig district.

Jews settled in Kaltinan in the middle of the nineteenth century, having
previously been forbidden to live there. The first Jew to receive permission
was David Kaltinaner, who had been abducted as a child to serve in the army of
Czar Nikolai I. He constructed a prayer house and a bathhouse in the town.

Eleven Kaltinan Jews are named in the Hebrew newspaper HaMelitz #121
in a list of donors for the settlement of Eretz-Yisrael dated 1900 (see Appendix 1).

In 1918 Lithuania became an independent state, and following the Law of
Autonomies for Minorities issued by the new Lithuanian government, the Minister
for Jewish Affairs, Dr. Menachem (Max) Soloveitshik, ordered elections to
community committees (Va'adei Kehilah) to be held in the summer of 1919.
In Kaltinan a community committee of five members was elected. This committee
functioned from 1920 until the end of 1925 when the Autonomy Law was annulled
by the Lithuanian government. In these years the committee was active in all aspects
of the Jewish life in town.

According to the first government census of 1923, there were 660 residents, 130
of them being Jewish (20%).

During the first years of the new Lithuanian state the economic situation of
Kaltinan Jews was difficult. They received aid from the YeKoPo
organization for food and cultural needs, with access to a loan fund.

The government survey of 1931 showed that there were nine shops in Kaltinan,
five of them being Jewish: two taverns, two textile shops and one leather shop.
Jews also owned a wool-combing workshop and two flourmills.

In 1937 there were two Jewish butchers, a baker and a tinsmith. There were no
Jews among the fourteen telephone subscribers listed in 1939.

In the elections for the eighteenth Zionist congress (1935) 28 Kaltinan
Zionists voted as follows: twelve voted for the Revisionists, nine for the
General Zionists A, six for the Labor party and one for Mizrahi.

Before World War II about 15 to 20 Jewish families lived in Kaltinan. Despite
their small number, the community had a rabbi, Yits'hak-Eliezer Vishnevsky. He
was murdered by Lithuanians in July 1941, together with his community.

With the annexation of Lithuania to the Soviet Union and its change of status
to a Soviet republic in the summer of 1940, nationalization of factories and
larger shops owned mostly by Jews, followed. All Zionist parties and youth
organizations were disbanded, and Hebrew educational institutions were closed.

On the second or third day after the outbreak of war between Germany and the
Soviet Union, June 23 or 24, 1941, following a battle with the retreating Red
Army, the Germans entered Kaltinan. On June 29, 1941, S.S. men arrived in the
town, and together with Lithuanians, they detained all Jewish males fifteen
years old and older and transferred them to the work camp at Heydekrug
(Silute). Jews from other towns including Vainutas and Laukuva were also
brought to this camp. The prisoners were forced to work at digging drainage
channels. The work mostly lasted from dawn till evening and the food was
scanty; 300 grams of flavorless bread and half a liter of watery soup per day.
The attitude of the German foreman towards them was vicious. In winter when the
weather conditions precluded work on drainage, the Jews were sent to the
railway station at Stonishken in East Prussia for the strenuous work of loading
wagons.

In August 50 to 60 men, mainly the elderly and weak, were separated from the
others. They were told that they would be returned home, but on the way they
were murdered. In October and November 1941 further selections were made and
those chosen were told as before that they would be sent home, but, as it was
later discovered, they were murdered and buried in the ravines of Siaudvyciai.

At the end of July 1943 the men from the Heydekrug camp were transferred to
Auschwitz. About 100 of them were annihilated there. The remainder of them
were sent to the Warsaw ghetto after about two months in order to vacate the
ruins. Many died in a typhus epidemic that broke out in Warsaw. In summer 1944
the survivors were transported to the Dachau concentration camp. No one from
Kaltinan survived to be freed by the American army.

The women and children who remained in Kaltinan were put to work by the
Lithuanians in different projects, mainly in agriculture. On September 16, 1941
(24th of Elul, 5701) they were all were brought to the Tubines Forest,
to a place about 7 km. along the road to Silale, where they were murdered together
with other Jews from the region. According to Soviet-Lithuanian sources two mass
graves were later found to contain the bodies of 500 men and 700 women.

After the war a monument was erected on the graves: this was replaced in the
1990s.

The mass grave with the monument in the Tubines Forest

The tablet on the monument with the inscription in Lithuanian and Yiddish:
In this place the Hitler assassins and their local helpers in 1941
murdered 700 Jews, men, women, children.

The above article is an excerpt from Protecting Our Litvak Heritage
by Josef Rosin. The book contains this article along with many others, plus an
extensive description of the Litvak Jewish community in Lithuania that provides
an excellent context to understand the above article. Click here to see where
to obtain the book.

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose
of fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without permission of the copyright holders: Josef Rosin and Joel Alpert.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation.The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.